The school district has filed a petition for involuntary bankruptcy against Dante DeMiro, the Southfield man indicted on five felony counts related to a Ponzi scheme the FBI says bilked at least $10 million from investors.

That filing, which aims to force DeMiro and his MuniVest investment firm into bankruptcy, should help the district recover “avoidable transfers” of school district money that DeMiro allegedly used to cover investments made by others, said Todd Geerlings, assistant superintendent of Mona Shores.

“Obviously, that’s one of our highest priorities right now,” Geerlings said. “We’ve been exploring all possible avenues for recovery of the funds and trying to do that as aggressively as we can.”

Geerlings, working with the district’s law firm of Miller Johnson, is handling the recovery efforts in the absence of Superintendent Terry Babbitt and Finance Director Mike Schluentz, who are on paid administrative leave.

Mona Shores sent $3.7 million in voter-approved bond proceeds to DeMiro, who was supposed to use the money to buy certificates of deposit from multiple banks. However, the FBI alleges DeMiro used that money to pay off other investors and for his own use.

The FBI says it tracked $765,445 of the school district’s money to payments DeMiro made to Lapeer County and Comstock Township near Kalamazoo. Those municipalities also had sent money to DeMiro for CDs he never purchased, and despite the payments they received from him, they are still owed nearly $2 million.

The strategy in filing the bankruptcy against DeMiro is to get a bankruptcy trustee appointed who will oversee how his assets would be divided among his alleged victims, Geerlings said.

“Laws on fraudulent conveyances allow many of these transfers to be recovered and paid to all of the victims to make sure all the victims are treated equally, rather than first-come, first-served,” he said.

The federal indictment against DeMiro indicates other victims of his Ponzi scheme include Bank @lantic, a Virginia institution that lost $2.75 million, and a credit union in Iowa, which lost $790,000.

Some of the victims’ money was used for a $1.6 million payment to a labor union in Allen Park that had invested with DeMiro, according to the criminal complaint.

It’s unclear whether more victims will surface in the FBI investigation that Geerlings termed ongoing “and very active.”

Also unclear is whether the criminal case, being tried in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, has to be concluded before victims can recover assets, Geerlings said.

“We’re going to try and recover as many assets as we can and protect what we feel is Mona Shores’ stake in this,” Geerlings said. “Will there be differences in opinion (among alleged victims) in terms of whose is what? Probably.”

Geerlings said the district is confident the U.S. government has seized all of DeMiro’s assets.

According to a criminal forfeiture order in the indictment, DeMiro’s known assets include almost $500,000 in bank accounts and two homes. The homes include a Northville Township home purchased by MuniVest in June for $401,000 and a Milford Township home with an estimated value of $204,000, according to tax records.

“We’ll continue to take all steps necessary to aggressively pursue recovery,” Geerlings said. “It’s a long process, and it’s just begun, but we’re doing everything we can.”